The report Approximation of the EU Environmental Legislation - Case studies of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia compares the level of compliance of CEE environmental legal acts with respect to the EU's critical environmental protection legal instruments, assessing, in the process, the transplant of EU legal instruments and mechanisms into CEE legal acts. Although the main goal was to assess progress in EU environmental approximation, it is also important to identify obstacles and problems which have made this process difficult, slow and expensive. This provides a better understanding of the problems faced by those CEE countries which have begun to adjust their legal systems to EU norms; an inventory of existing problems and successes can also be used as a starting point to develop better approximation strategies for specific countries.
This report has been prepared in the framework of a project - a joint effort of the European Commission DG XI and the REC - that assessed the level of transference of EU environmental legal instruments to environmental legal systems in 10 associated countries as of the end of 1995. Begun in June 1995, the project produced a series of country reports on the relevant countries, each of which were prepared by domestic experts. All country reports have been included in this report. In addition to the country reports, a comprehensive regional overview has been prepared to point out the similarities and differences of the approximation processes in these CEE countries. Annex 1 explains the methodology used in the preparation of the country reports. Annex 2 provides information about the assumptions used and the calculations made to assess the level of compliance in a quantitative way. Annex 3 contains the list of participants in the project.
Several contributors cooperated to prepare both the country reports and the final report.
Christine Haffner and Athanassios Balodimos at the European Commission DG XI provided several useful comments and suggestions.
Report methodology and format were elaborated by the editorial board and the staff of the REC.
The editorial board, consisting of Gyula Bandi and Stanislaw Wajda, edited the country reports and prepared the regional overview.
The English language editors were Helen Carr and Pál Olchváry.
The country reports were prepared by the following experts: Krassimira Tzvetkova (Bulgaria), Pavla Kocikova (Czech Republic), Tiit Kallaste, Kullike Maurer, Tonu Vesi (Estonia), Gyorgy Erdey, Mariann Karcza (Hungary), Inga Linde (Latvia), Evaldas Vebra (Lithuania), Jerzy Sommer (Poland), Simion Hancu, Ion Hortopan, Mihai Lesnic (Romania), Bozena Gasparikova, Janette Gressova, Anna Stykova (Slovakia), Mirko Ilesic, Rajko Knez (Slovenia).
Hannes Veinla (Estonia), Istvan Gellerthegyi (Hungary), Kestutis Lipeika (Lithuania), Marek Gorski (Poland), Dumitra Popescu (Romania) also contributed to the elaboration of the country reports. The layout was done by Cynthia Fedler.
The project was coordinated by Laszlo Bencze and supervised by Laszlo Karas, manager of the REC Initiatives Team.
I would like to thank all of them for their contributions, enthusiasm and commitment.
I would also like to thank the Directorate General XI, Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection, of the Commission of the European Union for their kind cooperation and financial support during the project, and for supporting the idea of publishing this report.
Stanislaw Sitnicki
Executive Director